revolution, everywhere

One week in the life, and what a week. Monday I started out for North Carolina, with REVOLUTION, and Sunday night, last night, I sat in the tutti-fruitti chair at home in Atlanta, with Masterpiece Theater and my phone, watching and texting along with my Mississippi cousin, Carol, a long-standing tradition. Some of the life between those two moments is captured below in phone photos -- I miss my camera! But I did not miss my friends. They were right there, all along, right beside me, as you will see, accompanying me and championing me and coaxing me forward, in person and online, and certainly in my heart. I kept up my travel-marathon training on the road (for a trip I'm taking in Feb/March, which we'll get to). More to say on the other end of this string of photos, including a little about next week in NYC. Thanks for coming along with me!

WHEW. It fills my heart right up. Thanks so much to the fine folks at the Carolina Friends School, Cary Academy, A.B. Combs Elementary School, Quail Ridge Books and Music, McIntyre's Fine Books, the Fearrington House Inn, Scuppernong Books, and the Chatham County Community Library. Y'all were so gracious and generous. Thanks to Charlie Young for accompanying me for a good leg of the tour -- you are the best.

Jandy Nelson: THREE booksellers hand-sold me your book on this tour. I got two photographs. Booksellers loved I'll Give You the Sun. I love you! And your wonderful new book. Busting my buttons over my former student's success!

That's Jennifer E. Smith, David Levithan, and Stephanie Perkins, reading from their new books and signing at my fabulous local indie, Little Shop of Stories in Decatur, GA, yesterday. I came home to walk a 5K as part of my travel-marathon training, and to see my editor, David, do his thang at Little Shop. Then Jim and I walked the old Decatur Cemetery, a soothing end to a busy week, and had a little supper at EATS, one of our favorite Atlanta eateries.

This will be a quiet (hahahaha) week of getting ready for the National Book Award events in New York City next week. We leave in six days. I have a fabulous black dress. I bought some bling for my dress. I am returning it. I called the shop and said, "I forgot! I'm going to be wearing a medal!" Because I am. REVOLUTION is a National Book Award Finalist. I am so proud of my book. I love my book. I love my publisher, Scholastic, for publishing the book I wanted to write. I love the NBA judges for recognizing my book. I love the process. I love the books REVOLUTION is keeping company with this season. I love the lofty ideal of writing from the heart the story that is asking to be written. I love having the opportunity to share that story with as wide an audience as possible. Thank you, thank you, thank you... that's what I want to say, over and over again. It has been such a rush, such a trip, such an excitement, such a delight, such a surprise, and such an honor. I am forever grateful. See you all in New York next week.

Love, Debbie

picture stories

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An afternoon drive out of Atlanta, a patriotic rest stop, a Confederate flag flying over the Columbia, South Carolina Statehouse, an arrival at Mama's house on John's Island.

O Charleston, O Youth, O History of Long Ago. The marsh, the swamp, the salt, the breeze. Falling in love with the sousaphone player in the high school marching band who would grow up to be the piano man who would lure me to Atlanta, where I've lived these past ten years.

Yesterday we traveled, like we often do, to the place where we fell in love and parted from one another for 30 years, and then reunited when we were older and after we had found our life's treasure, what we wanted most in the world: music, family, home, good work to do. And now there would be love.

So we walked the Ravenel Bridge over the Cooper River this morning and waved at the Alzheimer's walkers, then came home and watched Donald pick the pears from the tree by the road, like he does every year. He showed us his haul of blue crabs. Jim made his mother a tomato sandwich from the last of the season's tomatoes. He made sure to use the Duke's and the pimento cheese, the way she likes it.

Then I settled beside Mom and showed her the little videos of her great-granddaughter in the wading pool with Grandma (me), making a cake for Grandpa (Jim), and the 15-second birthday videos of Jim -- her boy.

I'd put a chuck roast in the oven, and while the house napped, I sneaked away by myself for an hour. I returned with a "porridge cup" as the little label said, and its red-and-white saucer -- "I will use this for my yogurt and berries in the morning," I announced, and we ate our supper with Mom and watched The Roosevelts on PBS, but only after a re-run of The Voice, which I had never seen, but which Mom knows all about.

I like being in love. I like loving (and being loved by) a man, a family, my children, my work, my community, my struggles, my life. I am in love with the small moments that make up a life. I love the meaning they give my days.

I'm telling "picture stories" over on Instagram these days. Stories with a beginning, middle, and end, mostly in a circle, made up of small moments. I don't know what I'm going to do with them yet, but I like telling them. I like experimenting -- always -- with just what a story is, and how to shape it and tell it. These "picture stories" will find ther way into my teaching, I'm sure, but for now, I'm just curious, and I'm enjoying the exercise, the practice, and the surprise.

It's kind of surprising to be blogging again. I like that, too.

birthing a revolution

Friends, I am Mississippi as I write this. I have an essay at the Nerdy Book Club blog today, about birthing Revolution in Mississippi. I wrote it on the eve of my trip. I am still in Mississippi, with family, until tomorrow, when I come home and write about my adventures in schools, in bookstores, and in my own heart. 

In the meantime, you can read the Nerdy post and then catch up visually with this past week's adventure on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Most of the photos are at Instagram.

It has been an emotionally packed week that has walloped me upside the head more than once, has surprised me at every turn, and has been one of the most gratifying experiences of my writing life. 

More soon -- I'm soaking up kinfolks today. Thank you for reading. Peace. Love. Revolution.

Love, Debbie

The Leflore County Courthouse in Greenwood, Mississippi, the location for so much of the action in Revolution, and in 1964 Freedom Summer.

I met one of my heroes.

Mrs. Jaume's second-grade class.